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Jack and Joy

The creator of Aslan and Narnia married a Jewish communist from Manhattan.

By

Ruth Scurr

Oct. 9, 2015 4:25 p.m. ET

Abigail Santamaria set out to rescue “the woman who captivated C.S. Lewis” from the “Shadowlands” myth. Originally a British TV film (1985), then a stage play (1989) and then a movie (1993), “Shadowlands” portrayed the love affair between bachelor Oxbridge academic “Jack” Lewis and the American poet Joy Davidman. Her death from cancer, soon after their romance began, challenged the Christian faith that had inspired Lewis to write “The Screwtape Letters” and the Narnia Chronicles. In childhood, he had lost his mother to cancer, and “Shadowlands” focused on this distressing parallel in Lewis’s life, sidelining any details...